Seathwaite (Borrowdale)

Where the road runs out

The single-track road up Borrowdale from Keswick simply stops at Seathwaite Farm. There is no through road, no roundabout, no gesture towards continuing — the tarmac ends at a cluster of farm buildings, and beyond that you walk. This is the head of the valley, eight miles south of Keswick, hemmed in by Great Gable, Scafell Pike and the Seathwaite Fells.

Seathwaite itself is a few farm buildings and a campsite, and that is the whole of it. There is no pub, no church, and no shop. What Seathwaite Farm keeps for walkers is an honesty box with basic provisions, which is the extent of the retail economy. For an actual pint you head a mile and a half north to Rosthwaite, where the Scafell Hotel has a bar and the Flock-In does café food, or a mile east to Stonethwaite and the Langstrath Country Inn. The nearest church is at Rosthwaite too.

Paths into the high fells

The reason people come is on foot. Seathwaite Farm is the Borrowdale start for Scafell Pike, at 978 metres the highest mountain in England; the route runs via Stockley Bridge, Sty Head and the Corridor Route, nine miles in total and considered one of the finest ways up. Great Gable, 899 metres and one of the most celebrated fells in England, goes off the same path via Sty Head. Grains Gill offers an alternative line up to Sprinkling Tarn and the high fells. Sty Head Tarn sits above the hamlet, the point where the Scafell Pike, Great Gable and Corridor routes converge.

Closer to home is Taylorgill Force, a 140-foot (43-metre) waterfall — one of the tallest in the Lake District — reached on the path towards Sty Head. The River Derwent rises somewhere above all this.

Rain without apology

It rains. Seathwaite averages 3,552 millimetres a year, 140 inches, which makes it the wettest inhabited place in England. This is stated as fact on the tourist literature rather than apologised for.

Wad and the pencil trade

The other distinction is older. Before 1565 a deposit of solid graphite was found here — "wad", or black cawke — pure enough to be sawn into sticks, and it led directly to the pencil industry in Keswick. The stuff was valuable enough that Parliament passed an Act making the theft of wad a capital offence, later softened to seven years' transportation. The mine was flooded and worked on and off, and the last significant graphite came out in the early nineteenth century.

The last leg into Seathwaite

There is no railway and no regular bus, though the seasonal Borrowdale Rambler, the 78/79, stops at Seatoller, half a mile north. You reach the valley on the B5289 from Keswick, which narrows to a single track before it gives up at the farm. After that, it is you and the honesty box.